Barbara Nickless

Barbara Nickless was made in Japan, born in Guam, and traveled through numerous ports of call to land in Colorado. All of which honed her sense of adventure and gave her an insatiable curiosity about pretty much everything. When she's not writing, traveling, or wandering through libraries, she's usually in the Colorado Rockies where she loves to hike, cave, snowshoe, and drink single malt Scotch—rarely, please note, at the same time.

She's chased her curiosity across multiple careers—raptor rehabilitator, astronomy teacher, piano teacher, instructional designer and even sword fighter. But writer is her favorite because of what she gets to do in the name of research. Most recently she role-played a drug dealer for Thornton PD’s SWAT training. Dropping f-bombs while staring into the steely eyes of twelve heavily armed SWAT trainees was a great opportunity to stand in the bad guy’s shoes. And to realize: you don’t mess with these guys. You just … don’t.

Up next? Learning about the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team, wandering through the souks of Morocco, and working on her climbing legs for Kilimanjaro. All in the name of research. Well … mostly.